Hundreds of people in eastern France demonstrated Saturday outside the Fessenheim nuclear power plant to protest its planned closure in 2016. "Fessenheim is safe, let it last!," the demonstrators, who numbered between 400 and 700 according to various estimates, and who included several local politicians, chanted as they marched behind a banner marked "No to the closure of the nuclear plant."
The 36-year-old plant, France's oldest, sits on the Rhine river, at the border with Germany, in the Alsace region. President Francois Hollande, whose Socialist Party is in an alliance with the Green Party, announced last year he would close the plant, which has been the focus of anti-nuclear protests.